Daily Archives: August 8, 2012

William B. (Jaybird) Rhoden, 55, died Thursday, August 2, 2012. Bruce was born January 12, 1957 in Jacksonville, Florida to Billy and Lennie Rhoden. He was preceded in death by his father, brother Eddie Rhoden and great-nephew Luke Burnsed.

Survivors include his loving mother, brother David Rhoden (Jackie), sisters Karen Carter (Joe) and Vicky Lorick (Harold); 11 nieces and nephews; 20 great-nieces and nephews. He will be dearly missed and was truly loved by all who knew him. The funeral service was held on Sunday, August 5 at 3 pm at Hardage-Giddens Town & Country Funeral Home in Jacksonville. Interment followed at Riverside Memorial Park in Jacksonville.

Even if their numbers are somewhat modest in Baker County, they’re still all around us.

Why bring this up?

Last week’s fireworks “malfunction” (remember the “wardrobe malfunction” at the Super Bowl?) at Memorial Stadium at the close of the BCHS graduation ceremony is why.

As you’ll note in the news coverage of the event in this week’s edition, there was stonewalling on the part of the school district and Macclenny Fire Department (which supervised the pyrotechnics) to reveal just who it was that furnished the fireworks.

The high school principal said, in effect, since they were “donated” he was reluctant to name the source. He did, however, assert the school district was responsible for fireworks being part of the graduation program.

Kinda hard to deny that. Otherwise, we’d have to assume some entity, vigilantes perhaps, brought the fireworks to the event without warning and “Bam!” — they went off.

A cluster of thunderstorms passed over Baker County the afternoon of May 31 but cleared out in plenty of time to avoid wrecking the Class of 1987’s second graduation ceremony as they did some two-and-half decades before.

They heard from former Baker High principal Danny Boutwell, classmates, former schools superintendent Tim Starling and others before their names were called to accept diplomas as a few hundred friends and family cheered them on.

“Aren’t you glad we won’t be called that class anymore,” said ‘87 grad and Macclenny dentist Dr. Margaret Cannon, who welcomed everyone to the event.

She and other speakers reminisced about what high school was like in the late 1980s. There were no cell phones and no computers, but you still had to pay your past due library fees to receive a diploma, as Mr. Starling reminded them.